Green Scream Fun!

Green Scream Fun!

 As I have said before, it has been a crazy busy school year.  So busy in fact, I have not worked on any book stuff much at all!  I have been wanting to create an animated read-aloud video for my book Into the Ocean but just haven’t had the energy or time to work on one much. If you work or have worked in the school system, then you know what I am talking about I’m sure. 

Halloween is one of my absolute favorite holidays in my classroom though and we have been having fun reading local ghost stories, drawing out some silly and cute monsters and other Halloween themed characters and my favorite, creating some silly, creepy and magical green screen videos!  I would love to share them with you but do to protecting my students privacy, I can't.   I can show you some screenshots though! We had a blast using masks, frames, music, and my students favorite……monster slip on bags. LOL  Sounds like fun, huh?  It really is but I didn’t just do this with one class.  I work with every grade, Kindergarten through fifth and we made sooooo many videos. At times, I was wishing my magic wand prop really could make me disappear. Hahaha!

Have you ever worked with a green screen app?  Do you have a favorite?  I really like DoInk, which sadly is only available on itunes.  This fun app makes creating fun videos easily.  You don’t even really need an official green screen, but they are better, and you can buy one for under $50 bucks.  However, you could do what I did for years and use a green table cloth.  I got the cheap party ones from the dollar store.  A dark holiday green won’t work, you need to get one as close to a basic green as you can for best results. 

Now that you have your screen, next comes forming an idea on what you want to do with it.  Storytelling is a popular use in classrooms.  Students can write a short story and either draw out the characters and turn into puppets and act the scene out, draw out the scene to be placed in the app and only have the students narrate the story or combine both! DoInk also has an amination app that may be combined with the green screen app.  You can check out DoInk on Twitter for more great ideas.

Veterans day is coming up next week and I already have a video in the works!  I have some amazing fifth graders who have volunteered to sing The Star-Spangled Banner while students who bring in pictures of their family veteran’s play across the screen. This video will be played during our Veteran’s Day celebration.

Next will be Thanksgiving and then Christmas!! So many ideas, so little time! 

*My videos are used for school purposes only.  I do not own the rights to the backgrounds or music used.